The non-ceiling fan has had the control knob ripped off. I found it and realised it was set on the lowest setting. I think that's fine, but no need to impose, chaps.
The wifi network is visible at low strength in my room but refuses to connect. It keeps asking for the password, even though my laptop already knows it, and even given the password it doesn't work. I find this odd - surely if I can see the network I should be able to connect - but hardly unprecedented and at least they never claimed wifi would work in the rooms. Besides, it gives me an excuse to semi-mingle with the smug young things tomorrow night. :-)
21:10. On the terrace at some bar/restaurant on (I think) Plaza Grande. Some noisy street music (may be mariachi, certainly could be) is taking place and a big crowd are watching.
I am not that enamoured of the place but I didn't want to return to my haunts of last night. I may move on after a beer or two.
Got up about 1pm, terrible. Went for a walk up Paseo de Montejo (quite elegant on the whole), then called in at YAMAC (if memory serves), the modern art museum near the cathedral. Quite cool in parts though I was feeling a bit knackered. At one point I was in a room with loads of classic reproductions and a group of rather young schoolkids (I might guess 6-8ish) came in with their teacher. There was a reproduction of (if memory and my Spanish serve) "The birth of Venus" and I distinctly caught several of the kids saying "naked" which was oddly amusing.
After the went over to the bus terminal, have bought a ticket for the 23:50 bus tomorrow getting to Palenque around 7-8am. I think there is a bus terminal there and it should be daylight by then. The ticket was MXN340ish which is nearly as much as two nights at my current hostel, but I guess it's going to cost about that anyway and this way I save time and the cost of one night's hotel. I have booked a hotel in Palenque for Wed and Thu nights. (Hotel, not a hostel. Hostelworld.com had only three place in Palenque and only two with availability, one of which was the hotel I booked (via another site in the end, saving USD2 and - more importantly - avoiding any risk of my 10% deposit being ignored) and the other which may have been a 'proper' hostel - if I even want that - but despite being 500m from the bus terminal seemed to overplay its 'jungle' credentials in a way which I found arachnophobically disturbing. wego.com showed me 8 hotels of which the cheapest was the one also on hoste
lworld.com, and which is the one I booked (via hotels.com, if memory serves).
Wasn't that interesting?
Surfed and started to upload the first batch of Chichen Itza photos (more to come later) when I got back to the hostel. Felt a bit of a lemon but oddly less so than last night, despite quite a lot of SYT sitting around chatting.
Oh, I went to a restaurant opposite the bus terminal to eat before going back to the hostel (I had had a sandwich earlier and two bottles of soft drink). I couldn't hold myself back on my bottle of orange juice and ended up getting two, but I think I'd drunk too much (non-alcoholic) stuff today and especially with having chugged the juice down I had to leave quite a lot of the food. I guess the heat was just getting to me and I wanted liquids.
The restaurant had this odd slightly animal/farmyard-y smell. I don't think it was dirty but it was a bit disconcerting.
The chairs here are horrible iron ones and the tables are slightly too high as well. Not very comfortable.
Oh, this bar is La Vía Olimpo.
Oh, I bought some insect repelling aerosol earlier. The conversation was weird, I didn't understand most of it and in some completely unintentionally perverse way kept taking everything the guy said as general. So if he mentioned one was natural, I asked if they were all natural. I didn't do it deliberately. It was just odd and I can't quite describe it. He hadn't heard of DEET either. But I got one with a pleasingly chemically sounding active ingredient and I am using it.
It seems a bit silly somehow to use it but there you go. I have to regard it as insurance against future itchy bites even if it feels unnecessary. (Maybe I should look into the malaria risk, but maybe I'm better not knowing given I have no tablets.)
Switched to michelada. I note that at this bar they don't salt the rim of the glass. I am not too enamoured of the salty rim (fnarr fnarr) so I don't mind, but I thought that was de rigeur.
Apropos of nothing, I was sort of reviewing the trip and I remember confirming what I was told on the Panama Canal transit, that you cannot really travel overlond from Panama into Columbia. It's the notorious Darien Gap, my Central America guide book has a brief entry for the town at the south end of the highway and basically spends about ten paragraphs describing exactly why it is such a bad idea to go further. The impression conveyed is that you might have a fifty-fifty chance of making it through alive, though I made those odds up, I doubt you can meaningfully calculate the true odds but it's clearly not a smart thing to do. I wonder what those guys who cycle from one end of America to the other do. Probably stretch a point and take a boat from Columbia to Panama. (I wonder if you could cycle round the deck on the boat to sort of maintain the concept of cycling all the way. :-) )
I am not desperately in need of it, but it would be good to get my hair cut. I haven't been actively on the lookout but I haven't noticed any hairdressers or barbers of any description here.
22:00, Music just finished, FWIW. The live music in the street.
Reading H G Wells "The New Macchiavelli". Oddly absorbing.
Over the last few weeks have put in a number of (mostly amazon.co.uk) orders for books and DVDs, mostly books. I figure they will provide something to lool forward to on my return, plus even though I kind of intend to bite the bullet and get back to work ASAP (as already observed, the sooner I do, the sooner my next stretch will be over), I will doubtless have a reasonable amount of time on my hands and it would be good to have stuff to do.
I need to brush up on my C++ etc prior to interviews but that shouldn't take too long. It would be good to try to pick up a bit of Java with a hope of maybing wangling some part-time commercial experience in, but realistically that ain't happening in the time I have available, so it will have to be a spare time project once I've got a contract, and if the opportunity turns up during that contract to gain commercial experience so be it, otherwise it will have to wait for a future occasion. I think the C++ train has not quite run into the buffers yet.
Oh, my late getting out of bed was not really down to a hangover. I did sort of wake earlier but just couldn't force myself up. The day didn't seem too stressful (though there was the lingering uncertainty over onward buses) but I was just somehow very comfortable in bed. For some reason one of the staff came and opened my door about 1pm and that finally prompted me to get up. Some other staff guy came round a bit later and asked if I was OK. This was sort of cool but a bit odd. They clearly didn't want to clean as there is a sign on the wall saying that they won't do that unless you ask. (I also wonder how they knew I wasn't up, given I am keeping the room key at all times, as they practically suggested.)
22:20. Lost opportunity. A guy just offered me a box of cigars. I said no. He said they were cohibas. I really really wish I had asked if they were siglo 6 now...
Much table clearage here. I will go back to the bar I was at to start with yesterday, unless something else intervenes.
22:30. That bar had no tables in street (maybe they stop the traffic on Sundays, now I come to look at it the actual pavement is way too narrow for tables) and the bar I finished at last night wasn't open. Some come back to Cafe Peon Contreras nearby where I came on first arriving. MXN38 for a beer and fucking 50 for a michelada. (The last place charged 28 for a Sol or 30 for the pricier beers and an extra 6 for a michelada.) I will switch off the micheladas for a bit I think. Oh well, seems the best bet all round.
Rough call is 50/50 tourists/locals.
Two guys with guitars playing and singing. Which I guess is moderately cool and not too intrusive.
I am moderately pleased with myself I recognise the waiter from yesterday afternoon, stupid as that may sound.
Ooh, another guy just offered me cohibas. Didn't do it. Do I have the balls? Probably not. What if he says yes? I don't want to buy them anyway.
The service isn't super fast here either. I wouldn't normally complain but at these prices...
Beer bottles here always show the capacity but it seems less obvious than in the UK. It's usually in fairly big print once you locate it, but I always seem to have to hunt for it first.
Just been to the bog. I note the sign saying not to put toilet paper in the toilet refers to 'el hinodoro', I am more used to seeing 'el inodoro'.
That will be a bit weird when I'm back in the UK. I have long since ceased to be bothered by not being able to flush the paper, but it will still be a change.
23:20. I think lately for whatever reason I've been making fewer conscious efforts to appreciate where I am and what I'm doing. While it doesn't exactly feel it sometimes, I suppose it is vaguely cool that I am sat here on the street at a bar in Merida, Mexico, listening to a couple of guys singing. I sometimes let the fact that what I'm doing is not particularly exotic by modern standards substitute for an appreciation of the fact that it is still pretty cool.
It occurs to me I should be in Oaxaca City on Saturday night, if not Friday (it depends whether I get an overnight bus from Palenque). That might be quite diverting.
00:00. Decided shuttery but there are maybe ten of us here. It was spitting very lightly earlier but nothing more. There is a moderate breeze now but it's very pleasant climatically. Much more so that during the day. I am nominally travelling alone but Betty is my frequent companion. Just got another beer, I suspect it will be the last and that's fine really.
00:05. Five mins ago found myself last here. Just got the bill, MXN218 and I have 200 in my wallet. Sigh. Had to dredge a 500 out of hidden belt. I need to be more pro-active (puke) about that, I was more careful until recently. One day I will find the hidden belt empty if I'm not careful. But I will probably never be that careless. And I do have a further reserve if push came to shove. I probably should make another biggish withdrawal tomorrow though.
00:40. Back at the hostel, have pretty much packed, sorted. Just have to get up in time for midday checkout tomorrow now. Have noted down a few other museums and already found out from the modern art museum (whose name I suspect I mangled earlier) there are some murals in the local government building which are probably my primary goal tomorrow. I assume - it would be unusual if they won't - they will hold onto my bags here tomorrow, if not I already asked when I bought the ticket and there are left luggage lockers at a terminal next door to the one my bus goes from. I hope that won't be necessary though. Anyway, to bed...
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